By Susan Granger
Set in 1977 during the height of Brazil’s 21-year military dictatorship, Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent” is a satirical political thriller, starring Wagner Moura as Marcelo (whose real name is Armando), who returns to his hometown of Recife to reunite with his young son after clashing with a corrupt federal official in Sao Paolo.
En route home during the yearly Carnival celebrations, he pulls his bright yellow Volkswagen Beetle into a rural gas station where a fly-strewn corpse lies on the gravel partly covered by a piece of cardboard not far from the fuel pumps, the stench attracting the attention of a pack of wild dogs.
The attendant tells Marcelo that the dead man tried to steal cases of motor oil and was killed by the night clerk. Then two cops drive up. They’re not interested in the corpse. Instead, they “inspect” Marcelo’s car, looking for contraband.
Apparently, the well-connected government official has taken out a contract on bearded Marcelo, forcing him to seek refuge in Recife with tiny, 77-year-old Dona Sebastiana (Tania Maria), who harbors others like himself; they comprise a leftist resistance movement composed primarily of “longhairs,” gays and opinionated women.
A former professor, Marcelo is a widower whose wife, Fatima (Alice Carvalho), died tragically; their son Fernando (Enzo Nunes) lives with his maternal grandparents.
When Marcelo takes a job in Recife’s identification office, he has access to archival documents that might be relevant to his late mother who apparently ‘disappeared’ – that significance is revealed in the plot’s present-day coda in which clean-shaven Moura plays a second role.
There’s a bizarre subplot about another murder victim whose leg was found in the belly of a tiger shark; this severed limb – “The Hairy Leg” – then revives itself in order to frighten ‘queer’ men cruising in a public park. Somehow, this ties in with Fernando’s obsession with the movie “Jaws.”
And the late actor Udo Kier (who died in November) plays a German tailor named Hans, a scarred Holocaust survivor who defends himself against bullying cops.
Mendonça Filho co-wrote the sociopolitical screenplay with Moura’s input, adapting elements from real 1980s diplomatic archives, working on a $12 million budget.
In Portuguese with English subtitles, on the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Secret Agent” is an expressionistic, elegiac 8, streaming on HBO Max.
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Susan Granger
Westport resident Susan Granger grew up in Hollywood, studied journalism with Pierre Salinger at Mills College and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with highest honors in Journalism. In addition to writing for newspapers and magazines, she has appeared on radio and television as an anchorwoman and movie critic for many years. Read all her reviews at susangranger.com.
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